CHAPTER XVIII.
“Demand me nothing; what you know you know;
From this time forth I never will speak word.”
Othello.
“Torments will ope your lips,”
Ibid.
After he had been defeated by the untoward accident of the shark in his attempt to rescue his captive chief, Lorenzo betook himself on board the schooner, a victim to disappointment and disgust.
He felt irresistibly inclined to break out in the most violent terms, and hurried down into his cabin as soon as he got on the deck of the schooner. He then partially gave vent to his feelings by speaking almost aloud.
“It would have been bearable,” he said, “bearable, if we had fought, and had been driven back; but to be foiled at the very moment when we were completing a breach, by a brute of a shark: confound it, and all other sharks, the brutes!” and thrusting his hand deeply into the bosom of his coat, he paced rapidly up and down his narrow cabin, while, from time to time, his lips moved violently as if he were repeating his anathemas against the particular shark and all the others.
This fit, however, did not continue long.